


i want to be still with you

by voltemand



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voltemand/pseuds/voltemand
Summary: He knows Tom; he thinks he knows Tom, and he’s always too much; that’s how you know he’s alright. You just need to give him a little bit of wood, a little pinch, a little push, and he’ll make a fire, a war, a race. A conflagration, maybe. He’ll burn down the town for you. He’ll say he will.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	i want to be still with you

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mitski’s “Texas Rezkinoff.”

Tom greets him with “We’re not having an affair.” His hands are shoved into his pockets. His suit, as always, is a little too large. 

“Okay,” agrees Greg. “Yeah.” Sure. Open marriages. Divorces, maybe. He can work with that. He’s tired; he doesn’t need Tom defining the terms of whatever this is. “We aren’t.”

Tom hits him. His hand is cold. Greg thinks _get some mittens_ out of nowhere; it’s all very domestic and disturbing. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Greg. This is a big deal. Don’t you want to be having an affair?”

Greg thinks. “No.”

“You don’t want anything,” Tom says, and his voice is soft, almost, or at least as soft as he can be. Greg is a little scared now. He knows Tom; he thinks he knows Tom, and he’s always too much; that’s how you know he’s alright. You just need to give him a little bit of wood, a little pinch, a little push, and he’ll make a fire, a war, a race. A conflagration, maybe. He’ll burn down the town for you. He’ll say he will.

“No,” Greg repeats. It seems safer than the alternative; he’s always been very concerned with staying safe. He lives, after all, to please. Whom he pleases (and protects), even if it is only himself, after all, is of no importance.

Tom claps him on the back. His hand is still cold. “Yeah,” he says. “Right answer.”

Greg isn’t sure about that.

\--

This is how it started. How it starts. How it will start.

Greg is fifteen. Wrong story, but he was fifteen once; everyone is. He is, anyway, and he’s smoking with his friend Hugh—Tom scoffed once at that, _Hugh_ , called it _unpleasantly peasanty_ or something—and Hugh says “Greg.” Hugh is short. Most people are. He leans in.

Or, if you like things neat, Logan’s birthday. Tom is handsome in the way men who are a little bit past their prime always are: handsome in their desperation. They want so hard that their desire osmoses over to you. Greg allows himself to be taken in. Tom allows himself—Greg isn’t sure. Maybe the point is that he never allows himself anything.

But when it starts, when it really starts, Tom wears a tie. He wears ties every day, so it’s not like it’s a big deal. But he wears a tie, anyway, which Greg knows because he grabbed it. By accident. Sort of.

Let’s go back.

“Greg, you cocksuck,” Tom says. “I’m not even saying cocksucker for you, I’m fucking shortening it, because you don’t _deserve_ to be called a cocksucker. Cocksuckers everywhere are disgusted by you. You fucking idiot.”

It’s like this. Greg has fucked up. Or not. He hasn’t, he’s doing the right thing, he’s looking out for the world. For, like, every skinny kid who wants a sandwich. For little baby Greg, if Greg hadn’t had a billionaire great-uncle. _Eggs of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your shells._

Greg hasn’t fucked up, but he’s fucked up Tom, apparently, because Tom is breathing heavily, muttering, mumbling, mulling over whatever punishment he’s decided for Greg. But Tom isn’t his boss, or, technically he is, but Greg is a good person again, and he can quit.

“I am,” Greg finds himself saying, “I am, actually.”

“What the fuck are you, Greg?”

“A cocksucker,” Greg says, and Tom is just so close; his eyes are just so wide; he’s a baby, a little baby who needs Greg, a tiny little baby cuckoo, snapping and spitting and staring. Greg’s and not-Greg’s. His and not-his.

He pulls Tom in.

\--

The sex is godawful, unsurprisingly. Tom wants to be good at it, and it makes him worse. Greg prefers it when they sit afterward--Tom always likes to sit, back straight and fingers spread wide over his knees, cobwebbed with tiny veins.

“You’re a good guy,” Tom says once, and Greg nods at him absently until he remembers where he heard that last. The wedding. Obviously.

“You, uh, you too.”

“Say it.” Tom’s all up in his face. Greg could count his eyelashes if he wanted.

“Say what?”

“That I’m a good guy.” Petulant.

“Okay, Tom, okay. You’re a good guy.”

“You really think so?”

“You’re… you’re better than anyone I’ve ever met.” _Wow,_ great _job, Hirsch._

“Liar.”

“Go to sleep, Tom.”

“I _am_ asleep, Greg.”

When Tom finally falls asleep, his hands are clasped together on his pillow like a little boy praying. Greg pulls the blanket over him and stands up.

He looks back down. Tom’s eyelids flutter. He’s almost lovely.

Greg keeps watching.

\--

They’re not having an affair. Because Tom has an open marriage, allegedly, and it’s not like they’re lying to anyone, especially not Shiv. If she asked, they would be forthcoming, of course. If she asked. Which _she hasn’t, Greg, you dumbfuck._

Tom explains this all very patiently, and Greg stops himself from thinking anything, imagines his mind going very blank, very tidy, an apartment with no furniture, ascetic, monkish.

Tom also explains that he loves Shiv more than anything on earth, and Greg doesn’t have any thoughts to stop about that. Tom loves Shiv, duh. Who asked.

“She’s my _wife_ ,” Tom says, relishing the word. “Holy motherfucking matrimony.”

“And you’re my cousin-in-law,” Greg says, unable to stop himself. “We’re like Adam and Eve and Ham and whatever. You’re like Moses, and I’m Jesus.”

Then Tom gets into an argument with him over whether or not that’s blasphemous--apparently, Minnesotans care a great deal about their Bibles, their fast food, and their dicks, in that order--and Greg wants him quietly and then very loudly.

He thinks that he’s a little in love.

\--

It’s pretty easy to adjust to this new revelation, file it in his brain along with all of the shit he knows about himself. _Greg Hirsch, white male, 6’6”, do not resuscitate, technically an organ donor but he’s not so sure about that. Also, apparently, having an affair with his second cousin’s husband and falling slowly in some amorphous feeling (love, you goober) with said cousin’s husband._

Tom’s perched on Greg’s sofa, all folded into himself, a little rumpled. Lived-in. He looks good. “Have you ever done this before?” he asks, very seriously. 

Greg almost chokes on his drink. “You mean… sex?”

Tom scoffs. “Obviously you’ve done sex before. Had sex before. Fucked before. I mean with a man.”

“Um,” Greg says, “that’s kind of the only kind. That I’ve had.”

Tom is vaguely impressed. “Really?” Unsaid, but clearly what he’s thinking: _that’s allowed?_

“I told you, I’m a, a, a cocksucker.”

Tom huffs out a laugh. “Get on it, then.” Like it’s the funniest thing anyone’s ever said.

Greg can’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching.

\--

Later: they’re not living together, and this isn’t an affair. It’s like this (and Greg is realizing how much he thinks that, how much he over-explains everything, rationalizes, _dude, you’re in too deep_ ): Shiv has kicked Tom out to, according to him, fuck women and make a shitton of money. So he needs a place. And he’s not _made of money, Greg, so this made sense_.

They watch awful eighties movies and order Thai and Tom smiles a lot, not the usual grimace but something slow and quiet. Greg watches him and feels himself getting watched. Tom puts his head in Greg’s lap, and Greg runs his fingers through Tom’s hair.

But before that. It’s Tuesday. Things like this always happen on Tuesdays. It’s barely midnight, and Tom is already getting nosy and needy, like he wants Greg more than anything else, like he’d do anything to know him, like they’ll know each other until the end of time.

“Hey,” and Tom is poking him on the shoulder, “hey.”

“What?”

“Do you think” (his eyes are large and very blue; he isn’t smiling) “do you think that you’re meant to meet some people, Greg?”

It’s a pretty dumb question. “I don’t--I don’t think I know.”

Tom snorts. “You wouldn’t. What a fucking stupid question, right?”

“Yeah,” Greg grins. “What a stupid question.”

“I ask,” Tom says, very self-importantly, “because I know the answer.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Greg. I’ll teach you.” He’s whispering, their faces close on the pillow. Tom’s breath ghosts across his face.

“Okay.”

“The meaning of life,” Tom begins, and then he sees Greg’s face. “I’m fucking with you. What I meant to say is that of course we’re meant to meet some people.” A pause. “I think I was meant to meet some people.” He blinks. “You figure it out.”

“Okay,” Greg says. “Okay.” He falls asleep to Tom’s slow breath almost at his ear.

When he wakes up, Tom is still there. Tom is still his.

**Author's Note:**

> Yell with me on Tumblr at [withatalentforsquaddrill](https://withatalentforsquaddrill.tumblr.com) (for general bullshit) or [foresme](https://foresme.tumblr.com) (for fandom bullshit).


End file.
